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Monday, August 1, 2016

Unlocked...Review

About the book:17-year-old Hannah is losing her grip on reality, which is affecting not only her but her friends and family too. She wrecked the car when bugs crawled over her hands, but were the creepy things even real? Now someone is moving Hannah’s possessions around in her room, or is she imagining that also? Why does she feel like she isn’t in control of her own brain anymore? Hannah is terrified she’s headed for a horrible life in and out of the mental institution, just like her dad. When her friends bail, Hannah is left floundering. Her boyfriend, Manny, doesn’t believe her wild stories, and new girl Chelsea is practically replacing her at school. Only artsy outsider and self-proclaimed occult expert, Plug, agrees to help Hannah discover the truth, but even he can't help Hannah reclaim her mind from whatever is taking over. She'll have to do that on her own, especially if she wants to save her friends, her mom, and herself.

After letting herself be hypnotized at a county fair, Hannah at first thinks it was unsuccessful. But soon, she finds herself hallucinating and doubting her own thoughts. When she learns that her father had a history of mental illness, she becomes frightened that she could end up like him.

As she struggles to discover what exactly is happening to her, the people she thought were her friends treat her like a pariah and she is forced to find new friends. Fortunately her new friend Eugene believes that there is something going on other than mental illness and he alone is willing to help her find herself and discover what exactly happened at that fair.

YA isn't my usual genre, but occasionally I find YA books that capture my attention. Unlocked didn't just capture my attention, it demanded it. This was one book that I couldn't put down. The suspense, the wonderment at what was happening to Hannah and why, the friendship conflicts, everything just captivated me.

As she showed us in her debut novel Who R U Really, Margo Kelly has a solid grasp of what it's like to be a teenage girl. I don't anymore and I have a house of boys. But, Hannah's frustrations with friends and her mother and the situation read as real and believable. Her fear of losing control of her own mind was palpable.

The supernatural elements helped move the story along smoothly with enough twists that I did not anticipate everything that Hannah went through to find her answers, and the story kept me enthralled until the end.

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